Franklin Domenico "Bòi" Antoin

Who is Franklin Domenico "Bòi" Antoin?

Franklin Domenico "Bòi" Antoin, born in 1955, has spent decades documenting the history and culture of Bonaire. He began working as a journalist and writer on the island in 1978 and, since 1991, has published regularly on Bonairean history and heritage, including research connecting the island's colonial-era salt industry to the transatlantic slave trade and the forced labor of enslaved Africans in Bonaire's salt pans. Over more than thirty years he built an extensive personal archive of the island's twentieth-century heritage, encompassing photographs, video and audio recordings, objects, books, and documents, now known as Archivo Boneiru. Bonairean cultural organizations, including Plataforma Kultural and Fundashon Historiko Kultural Boneriano, have worked to digitize this collection and make it publicly accessible, preserving material that would otherwise risk being lost. Antoin's writing and archival work have made him one of the most cited voices on Bonairean history, regularly consulted by museums, researchers, and heritage foundations seeking to understand the island's Indigenous Caquetío, Dutch colonial, and Afro-Caribbean past. His sustained, community-rooted preservation work stands as one of the most complete records of a small island's collective memory.

Sources: Archivo Boneiru, "Informatie over Archivo Boneiru" · Writers Unlimited, profile "Bòi Antoin" · Sprekende Geschiedenis, "Archive Boneire Bòi Antoin — Telling oral history"